Drivers want full-time, traveling safety crews; NASCAR says no

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- With flames engulfing them, Bobby Labonte and Ryan Newman had to keep calm while scrambling out of their fiery race cars.

Both made it out without serious injury in the separate accidents, plunging out of their burning cockpits before safety crews even arrived to assist them.

The two recent brushes with danger have some teams pressing NASCAR for upgraded firefighting efforts, ranging from redesigned fuel cells to fire extinguishers placed near the gas tanks.

Others are looking at a bigger picture: NASCAR is one of the few top racing series that doesn't employ its own full-time traveling safety crew. NASCAR maintains that using local emergency service crews works just fine.

"I think more important is being able to get to the car quickly -- that would probably be a better focus," owner Cal Wells said. "There are an awful lot of positives to having an onsite, at-track safety group."

Wells would know. He came to NASCAR from CART, which has a renowned safety crew that travels to every race.

"They were a very special group and they could get to know each driver very well," said Wells, car owner for Ricky Craven. "They were onsite in nanoseconds, and that, frankly, is probably the best preventive medicine as opposed to trying to redesign the fuel cell."

Christian Fittipaldi said it was the CART safety crew's response time and fast action that saved driver Alex Zanardi's life in a 2001 wreck in Germany. Fittipaldi, now a NASCAR driver, was participating in that CART race the day Zanardi's legs were severed.

"They took their belts off to stop the bleeding, and the decisions they made in the minutes -- maybe even seconds -- after the accident saved his life," Fittipaldi said. "That comes from being the same group of people treating the same drivers after every accident. They do it over, and over and over, and they are familiar with how to react every time."

Robby Gordon, another former CART driver, remembers being forbidden to compete on race day after being knocked unconscious earlier in the weekend. He had persuaded a local doctor to give him a clearance letter, but CART's safety team wouldn't accept it.

"The biggest thing with the CART team is they know every driver, they work with them all the time," Gordon said. "They know when something isn't right with a driver. And the repetitiveness of treating every injury, responding to every accident, makes them the best in the business."

Fittipaldi and Gordon don't knock NASCAR's current system. But Winston Cup champions Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart have both said their series would be better off with full-time safety crews.

NASCAR relies on each track to hire local emergency personnel to put out fires, assist with extricating and administer aid.

No one has questioned the qualifications of the crews hired, and NASCAR managing director Gary Nelson said series officials meet with them several times a weekend and even helps train them for certain scenarios.

Unlike other series, which allow safety crews to race to the scene of an accident immediately, NASCAR holds the emergency vehicles until the control tower determines the rest of the field has slowed down enough before dispatching help.

That lag time meant Newman and Labonte -- and Dale Jarrett and Ken Schrader in the weeks before -- had to flee from their burning cars without any assistance.

But Nelson defends NASCAR's system, pointing out that it has a full-time medical liaison who staffs the care center and builds the familiarity with the drivers that the CART system boasts.

And long before the Winston Cup crews arrive at each race track, an advance team has contacted the top local doctors in case they are needed.

"Rather than compare how we do things to another series, I'd have to say that our system works for us," Nelson said. "If I had a head injury, I'd rather have the top neurosurgeon in the area on standby than an orthopedist on site.

"And we spend a good deal of time with the crews we do have here at the track, preparing them for what could happen and how to handle each situation."

Regardless, some think a regular crew would help with peace of mind for the drivers.

"I've tried to get NASCAR to get their own safety crew," Stewart said. "When I ran in the IRL ... you always felt comfortable knowing that if you were in an accident you knew who the people were who were coming to get you out of the car. You knew they were trained properly.

"I'm praying for the day I show up at the race track and we see a bunch of guys in uniform that are the same guys we see the week before in the previous race and the week before that."